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Tim Duquenne, October 23, 2024

US West Coast Trip 2024: hop picking and collabs

Filed under: Brewing Folk / Stories
US West Coast Trip 2024: hop picking and collabs

A couple of weeks ago, we were invited out to Yakima to rub and select specific lots of some of our favourite hop varieties for 2025. James, Rich & Sam made the trip for 10 days of hop picking, collaborations and travels on the West Coast of the United States. Here's their story, narrated by our head brewer James.

Arrival in Yakima

The first portion of our trip was spent in the desert city of Yakima in Washington state. This is where the HQ of Yakima Chief Hops is located and every September it becomes a global hub for all things hoppy and beery. Bumping into old friends and forging new relationships is inevitable, and we kicked things off with an amazing fresh hop IPA collaboration brew with Bale Breaker Brewing Co. They're a brewery actually located right next to a huge hop farm who specialise in west coast focussed IPAs. During harvest they produce around ten different fresh hop beers and we were the first ever UK brewery to collaborate with them. We had a great time getting to know the two Kevin's and their brew team, drinking heaps of hoppy beers and brewing up an HBC522 fresh hop monster! We're hoping the beer will be pouring at Brau in November.

Hop Selection

Hop selection day started with a tour of Loftus Ranches hop farm and processing facility before knuckling down in our own private hop selection room to get rubbing and sniffing. We were selecting Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe hop varietals in both T90 and Cryo formats. The whole process took nearly three hours and it was great to bounce thoughts around and dive into the technical analysis before making our choices. We feel we've chosen some cracking lots, full of depth and complexity. For each variety and format we had four lots to choose from split 50/50 between Oregon and Washington farms. As it turns out we blindly chose 100% Oregon grown hops!

Seattle bound

After selection we headed west to spend a couple of days in Seattle and brew up a hazy IPA with Stoup Brewing. This collab was facilitated by NZ Hops and we had a really chilled and amazing day with Brad and his team. The beer utilised US and New Zealand hops and they even got some of the Verdant yeast in. Lovely people and truly exceptional beers, especially the fresh hop pilsner and west coast offerings. 

Santa Rosa & Windsor

Next stop: Northern California and a day or two spent soaking up some rays, drinking loads of Russian River IPAs and visiting some Redwoods. Although we didn't collaborate with any breweries in this region, we did have an amazing two hour tour of Russian River's massive Windsor facility, which was completed around 2018. Not only was it a tour, it was a tour with the man himself: Vinnie Cilurzo. This guy invented the DIPA and produces one of the best examples in the world of a west coast IPA called Pliny The Elder. Vinnie is super humble about it all and was totally open and easy going with information which was really great to see. This was all a bit of a 'pinch me' moment for sure. We hung out at the brewery for many hours before hopping on a plane to our final destination...

Los Angeles

The final portion of our trip was spent in L.A. where we hooked up with our long distance collaborative partners at Green Cheek Beer co, and brewed up another Double IPA banger! it was great to meet Evan in person, and we tweaked the recipe with him on the fly after tasting some ofour beers we had sent out to them. As with all the breweries we visited and worked with on this trip, the beers were very high quality and the human beings involved in making them all top notch. Great attention to detail at every turn and a clear passion for beer and the industry. What a trip!!!

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